We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piese of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms
- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Viktor Frankl

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action.
I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

Michelangelo 1475

There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.

William J. Bennett

The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be

Literary criticism, now almost entirely confined to the universities, thus moves against talent by moving against the canon. Academic preferment will not come from a respectful study of Wordsworth's poetics; it will come from a challenging study of his politics - his attitude to the poor, say, or his unconscious 'valorization' of Napoleon; and it will come still faster if you ignore Wordsworth and elevate some (justly) neglected contemporary, by which process the canon may be quietly and steadily sapped.

My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.